Soon, your smartphone may be charged in seconds!

Tuesday, Nov 22, 2016,15:08 ISTBy metrovaartha AAA

Washington | You could soon charge your smartphones within seconds, thanks to scientists, including one of Indian origin, who have developed new flexible super capacitors that can be recharged more than 30,000 times without degrading.

After 18 months or so, smartphones hold charge for less and less time as the battery begins to degrade.

Scientists from the University of Central Florida (UCF) in the US developed a new process for creating the novel supercapacitors.

The novel method could eventually revolutionise technology as varied as mobile phones and electric vehicles.

“If we were to replace the batteries with these supercapacitors, you could charge your mobile phone in a few seconds and you wouldn’t need to charge it again for over a week,” said Nitin Choudhary, a postdoctoral associate at UCF.

Researchers experimented with applying newly discovered 2D materials only a few atoms thick to supercapacitors.

Other researchers have also tried formulations with graphene and other 2D materials, but with limited success.

“There have been problems in the way people incorporate these two-dimensional materials into the existing systems – that’s been a bottleneck in the field,” said Yeonwoong Jung, an assistant professor at UCF.

“We developed a simple chemical synthesis approach so we can very nicely integrate the existing materials with the two-dimensional materials,” said Jung.

Researchers developed supercapacitors composed of millions of nanometer-thick wires coated with shells of 2D materials.

Scientists already knew 2D materials held great promise for energy storage applications. However, until the UCF-developed process for integrating those materials, there was no way to realise that potential, Jung said.